A French court has convicted seven men and one woman to prison for their roles in a hate campaign that resulted in the October 2020 murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb.
The sentences handed down range from three to sixteen years.
The violence came after social media posts erroneously claimed Paty had showed his students indecent photographs of the Prophet Muhammad during a free speech class.
Chechen born radicalized Muslim Abdoullakh Anzorov assassinated Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher at a secondary school in the Paris district of Conflans-Saint-Honorine.
Police shot Anzorov dead at the site, just minutes after killing the 47-year-old.
He was enraged by allegations on the internet that Paty had ordered Muslims to leave a 13-year-old class before presenting photographs of the prophet Muhammad.
In fact, Paty was teaching a lecture on freedom of speech, and before showing one of the contentious photographs first published by Charlie Hebdo magazine, he recommended students to avert their gaze if they were upset.
In the absence of the killer, this trial focused on those who gave him with moral or monetary assistance.
Over seven weeks, the court heard how a 13-year-old schoolgirl’s deception spiraled out of hand due to social media.
The schoolgirl’s father, Brahim Chnina, was among those jailed on Friday.
Chnina launched an internet campaign against the instructor, enlisting the support of extremist Islamic activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who has also been convicted.
Two of the killer’s buddies who were with him when he purchased firearms, as well as four persons with whom he exchanged messages on a radical chatline, were all found guilty.
The defense maintained that none of the eight were aware of Anzorov’s intentions, and that their words and actions became illegal only after he committed his act.
However, the judge ruled that the lack of foreknowledge was insufficient as a defence because what they did constituted incitement.